The Norwegian Lundehund (Norwegian: Norsk lundehund) is a small dog breed of the Spitz type that originates from Norway. Its name is a compound noun composed of the elements lunde, meaning puffin (Norwegian lunde, "puffin", or lundefugl, "puffin bird"), and hund, meaning dog. The breed was originally developed for the hunting of puffins and their eggs on inaccessible nesting places in caves and on cliffs. The breed was at the brink of extinction in the 1960s and preservation efforts have since been underway.
History
The Lundehund was a valuable working animal for hunting puffin birds along the Norwegian coast as food for over 400 years. The first known written record of the breed dates to 1591, when a bailiff wrote of his visit to Værøy that, "one cannot easily retrieve [puffins] from the depth without having a small dog accustomed to crawling into the hole and pulling the birds out." This time, only six dogs survived, one on Værøy and five in eastern Norway, Hamar, of which the latter five were from the same mother. This created a severe population bottleneck. Due to careful breeding with strict guidelines, there are now an estimated 1500 dogs in the world (2022), with around 900 of the population in Norway.
The breed is being tested in Tromsø airport by the Norwegian Air Traffic and Airport Management as a solution to airplane bird strikes. The dog is used to search for bird eggs around the airport for disposal.
The Lundehund is an active breed that requires a fair amount of exercise. It is a good family dog, and tolerates children well if properly socialized.
Health
The Norwegian Lundehund population shows signs of inbreeding depression including reduced fertility due to small litter size, inbreeding avoidance behaviors and low sperm quality. In addition, dogs with Lundehund Syndrome are predisposed to chronic atrophic gastritis and gastric neoplasms. There are indications that for the Lundehund to go on a low fat and higher protein diet has very positive effects on the health with respect to digestive problems. A study on mortality in the Lundehund population showed that 30% of deaths before 11 years of age occurred as a consequence of Lundehund Syndrome and another 10% of other gastrointestinal diseases. The genes responsible and pattern of inheritance for Lundehund Syndrome are not well understood and might, at least in part, be explained by polygenic inheritance and a high frequency—or fixation—of the responsible gene(s).